Northboro 'farmer' gets probation for illegal dumping

Thursday

Aug 22, 2013 at 11:51 AMAug 22, 2013 at 6:53 PM

By Elaine Thompson TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — Santo Anza Jr. of Northboro, convicted this month of running an illegal solid waste dump on what he led authorities to believe was a farm, was sentenced Thursday in Worcester Superior Court to 5 years probation.

Judge Richard T. Tucker sentenced Mr. Anza, 52, of 25 Reservoir St., Northboro, to 1 year in jail for several counts of violating the state solid waste act, but suspended the jail time for 5 years while he's on probation. For violating the Clean Air Act, he was sentenced to five years probation to run concurrently with the first probation sentence.

Judge Tucker had convicted him of the charges on Aug. 1. He was found not guilty of animal cruelty charges. He has 30 days in which to appeal.

More than 25 Northboro residents packed one side of the courtroom. Several of them had asked the judge to impose a jail term of at least 1 year and up to 5 years to allow Mr. Anza time to think about what he had done to them and their neighborhood.

They received some consolation from Judge Tucker's order to Mr. Anza to prepare a plan — within 60 days — to identify and remove the solid waste dumped on his 15-acre property at 429 Whitney St., Northboro.

One neighbor said there had been “a parade of over 3,000 large trailer trucks ... from Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire” dumping contaminated soil and garbage at the site.

The cleanup plan has to be approved by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Mr. Anza is prohibited from engaging in any activity that involves processing, storing, transferring, treating or disposal of solid waste during probation. He was also ordered to not have any contact with several neighbors who said they had been intimidated by Mr. Anza and his wife.

Mr. Anza, who bought his 15-acre property in 2009, initially told authorities he planned to use it as a beef farm, called SA Farm, complete with a slaughterhouse. But three months later, residents began seeing lines of 18-wheelers and garbage trucks passing their homes with tons of solid waste.

Northboro officials started holding hearings, at which residents said they had endured months of putrid odors from the rotting waste, noise at all hours, flies and dust that turned their lives upside down and made some of them physically ill.

After two years of packing local board meetings, a group of residents eventually hired an attorney and filed 120 complaints with Attorney General Martha Coakley's office. A cease-and-desist order was issued and the court case was filed.

On Thursday, some residents told the judge they were virtual prisoners in their homes for three years while Mr. Anza ran his illegal dump. They said they had to keep windows closed during the summer, couldn't use their swimming pools or hold outdoor family gatherings, and saw their property values lowered.

“I worked hard all my life. I should be able to live in my home without the unhealthy stench coming from an illegal dump site,” 79-year-old Millard B. Berryman of 24 Morse Circle told the judge.

Mr. Anza's children and several other supporters described him as an innovative farmer, a person who cares about the environment and a wrestling coach who has helped many young people.

Mr. Anza, a former high school state wrestling champion, told Judge Tucker that he was operating a farm. He said he used his experience of growing up on a farm in Weston as guidance in his operation. He said he was hauling in food waste to feed his animals and to keep it out of the solid waste streams — something, he said, that Gov. Deval Patrick is touting.

Residents and Assistant Attorney General Andrew A. Rainer also spoke about similar improper compost or solid waste operations Mr. Anza has had in other towns, including Webster, Raynham, Marlboro, Berlin, Southboro and Boston. Cease-and-desist orders were issued against him in those municipalities.

Mr. Rainer said the state has spent $1 million to clean up a compost leaf and yard waste collection site Mr. Anza operated for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. In August 2011, the DEP ordered him to halt the operation until violations were corrected.

The violations included having more than twice the amount of unprocessed compost material than was permitted, moderate to strong odors, evidence of rodent infestation, dangerously high temperatures in the compost piles, and no obvious signs of periodic turning of some of the compost materials.

Mr. Anza “has failed to conduct good management of the compost operations and carry out operations in a manner that prevents an unpermitted discharge of pollutants to air, water or other natural resources of the Commonwealth, and result in no public nuisance on the site. ... These violations were willful and not the result of error,” Richard J. Chalpin, regional director of DEP's northeast regional office, wrote in the Aug. 11, 2011, administrative order.